By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-30-20 Thursday will be a busy day on Capitol Hill on the issue of the power of Big Tech and what, if anything, to do about it. The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is holding an afternoon hearing on "Proposals to Strengthen the Antitrust Laws and Restore Competition Online." Witnesses [...]
Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District in Ukraine Relief v. Gurzhiy. This is a defamation action arising from an article published on The Slavic Sacramento about the misuse of humanitarian aid donations intended for Ukrainians. The defendant, Gurzhiy, is the [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-27-20 Exiting Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly isn't going without a final push for more broadcast deregulation. O'Rielly's re-nomination was withdrawn by the president after he criticized a social media regulatory effort the president is backing, In a blog post, O'Rielly praised FCC chairman Ajit Pai's media modernization program efforts to date, [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-25-20 Tech companies are not happy with President Donald Trump's executive order (EO) prohibiting government contractors, which obviously include many tech companies, from providing diversity training that "suggests America has a racial inequality problem." In a blog post, Jason Oxman, president of ITI (the Information Technology Industry Council) said [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-24-20 The chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee wants to force Big Tech CEOs to testify for an upcoming hearing. That is according to an announcement of an executive session markup Oct. 1 dealing with that issue. While the agenda for the meeting is subject to change, according [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-23-20 President Donald Trump told Republican state attorneys general Wednesday (Sept. 23) that the First Amendment needs protecting from "censorship, cancel culture, and consumer abuses inflicted by Big Tech companies," companies he suggested were waging war on free enterprise and free expression. The president issued an executive order in [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-23-20 The House this week passed four communications-related bills including ones blocking Congress' own mandate to auction T-Band spectrum and one that would require the FCC to look at market entry barriers to diverse media ownership. H.R. 5567, the Measuring the Economics Driving Investments and Access for Diversity Act [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-23-20 The Justice Department has provided Congress with a draft of its remake of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The draft reflects DOJ's June recommendations and is meant to effect President Donald Trump's desire to hold social media sites to new standards of content moderation, stemming from [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-22-20 New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI) and almost a dozen other civil society groups are strongly against the Republicans' latest effort to come up with national privacy legislation. That came in a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee opposing the American Framework to Ensure Data Access, Transparency, and [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-22-20 The National Association of Broadcasters has launched a campaign to celebrate the 231st anniversary (Sept. 25) of the passage of the constitutional amendments that became the Bill of Rights, particularly the First Amendment that guaranteed free speech and a free press. The campaign focuses on the key role [...]